in that respect, he was equal to most, having practiced at poupées from the age of fourteen, he called out the son of Crispin and shot him through the lungs. Another of Jasper's travelling friends was an enfant du peuple—boasted that he was a foundling. He made verses of lugubrious strain, and taught Jasper how to shuffle at whist. The third, like Jasper, had been designed for trade; and, like Jasper, he had a soul above it. In politics he was a Communist—in talk a Philanthropist. He was the cleverest man of them all, and is now at the galleys. The fate of his two compatriots—more obscure—it is not my duty to discover. In that peculiar walk of life Jasper is as much as I can possibly manage.
It need not be said that Jasper carefully abstained from reminding his old city friends of his existence. It was his object and his hope to drop all identity with that son of a convict who had been sent out of the way to escape humiliation. In this resolve he was the more confirmed because he had no old city friends out of whom anything could be well got. His poor uncle, who alone of his relations in England had been privy to his change of name, was dead; his end hastened by grief for William Losely's disgrace, and the bad reports he had received from France of the conduct of William Losely's son. That uncle had left, in circumstances too straitened to admit the waste of a shilling, a widow of very rigid opinions; who, if ever by some miraculous turn in the wheel of fortune she could have become rich enough to slay a fatted calf, would never have given the shinbone of it to a prodigal like Jasper, even had he been her own penitent son, instead of a graceless step-nephew. Therefore, as all civilization proceeds westward, Jasper turned his face from the east; and had no more idea of recrossing Temple Bar in search of fortune, friends, or kindred, than a modern Welshman would dream of a pilgrimage to Asian shores to re-embrace those distant relatives whom Hu Gadarn left behind him countless centuries ago, when that mythical chief conducted his faithful Cymrians over the Hazy Sea to this happy Island of Honey.[1]
Two days after his rencontre with Arabella in the Green Park, the soi-disant Hammond, having, in the interim, learned that Darrell was immensely rich, and Matilda his only surviving child, did not fail to find himself in the Green Park again—and again—and again!
Arabella, of course, felt how wrong it was to allow him to accost her, and walk by one side of her while Miss Darrell was on the other. But she felt, also, as if it would be much more wrong to
- ↑ Mel Ynnys—Isle of Honey. One of the poetic names given to England in the language of the ancient Britons.
